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Playing a Fast Tourney Shortstacked

by Blake on November 13th, 2007

So once a week at a local home game I play in a free roll tournament that usually has two full tables. Each player is given 1,000 chips and the blinds begin at 25/50, then double every ten minutes until they are 1000/2000. With ten minute rounds, and the play going pretty slow, you usually play 5-6 hands (if you’re lucky) each round before the blinds go up. As a result, the tournament very quickly turns into an all-in shootout, where luck is clearly favored over skill.

Playing in a tournament where you begin as a short stack, with 20 big blinds in front of you, you pretty much have to play pot odds and face cards. Any hand that adds up to 20 is pretty much something to go with, unless you’re clearly up against a monster (as in, several people go in front of you, and your odds are shot, or early on, during the 10-15 hands where you can actually afford to lose blinds).

The funny thing about these tournaments is that a lot of people bitch when “the worst hand” wins.

If someone, even a tight player, raises and you look down in the big blind (already a quarter of your stack) and see AJ suited, you’re going to go with it most of the time. In fact, if you don’t you’re not playing your odds. Holding even 7-3 in the big blind when you have 40% of your stack in the pot and there’s been a raise, folding is probably a bad play. You can only win this style of tournament by getting lucky. The only way you can even get in a situation where you’re playing real poker is to develop a big stack early on. So you play fast and you hope to get lucky and if you don’t, it was a free roll anyway.

I only mention all of this because last night there was a big point of contention with a friend over a certain hand. He went all in in early position for about 650 chips. I was in the big blind, which was 200 chips. I had about 900 chips left at this point, so roughly a quarter of my stack my invested, and calling did not bust me. I would have called with any suited connector here, any face cards, any pair, any ace. The odds and the fact that I would survive no matter what came and the fact that I was in free roll where the blinds go up so fast, I’m not folding my big blind for a 3x raise.

So I had a weak ace. I called, knowing I’m behind, hoping for best case scenario he has two paint cards. Sure, there’s obviously a case to be made for me to fold, being that there’s very little chance I’m ahead, but I was willing to gamble and try to double up, and if not I can still go on to play another hand. Either way, no big deal. Unfortunately, the player has 77, so I’m drawing badly. But I straighten out on the river and take the pot.

Of course from this point forward I have to hear no end of grief about how my play was donkey, how I sucked out, how I’m playing too fast, etc, etc, and no matter how I explained it I could not justify to him that the logic above, coupled with the fact that it really doesn’t matter in this kind of event. If you can’t take a “suck out” in a free roll tournament with a smile, you maybe need to switch to tic-tac-toe or Connect 4 or something. (wink wink Mr. R.).

Sometimes playing “correctly” is not the way to win.

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